Major General Bennett E. Meyers, wartime No. 2 purchasing officer for the Army Air Forces, had bet his hand like a man trying to make a pair of deuces look like a full house. But when his hand was called in Washington's Federal District Court, he folded; on trial for procuring perjury he declined to testify in his own defense.
His bald head gleaming under the photographers' lights, gimlet-eyed Benny Meyers last week heard himself declared guilty on three counts. Bleriot H. Lamarre had testified that Meyers had ordered him to lie to a Senate investigating committee about Meyers' connection with Aviation Electric Co. of Dayton, Ohio (TIME, Dec. 1). Meyers had taken $150,000 out of the company while paying Lamarre, as dummy president, a grudging $50 a week. Benny Meyers had not even offered character witnesses.
After the verdict, Meyers' blonde wife struggled through the crowd to put her arm around him, wept a little. Meyers was impassive. This week he was sentenced to 20 months to five years in prison.
There was more trouble ahead for General Meyers. He had been indicted on charges of lying to the Senate committee, of evading personal income taxes, and of falsifying the returns of Aviation Electric. And the Air Force, which had stripped him of his decorations and cut off his $550-a-month pension, was still waiting for a chance to court-martial him.